The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.

The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.

The idea that God is a worthy recipient of our gratitude for the blessings of life but should not be held accountable for the disasters is a transparently disingenuous innovation of the theologians.

Life itself is just a thin coat of paint on the planet, and we hold the paintbrush.

There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.

The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them-especially not from yourself.

What you can imagine depends on what you know.

There are no forces on this planet more dangerous to all of us than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism.

There may be things that are completely unknowable to us, so we must be careful not to treat the limits of our knowledge as sure guides to the limit of what there is.

A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being.

There is no polite way to suggest to someone that they have devoted their life to a folly.

Find mebeneath your tongue, but not with other lipsnor by another tongueFind melet your yearning run wild as thirst seeks wateras silence seeks the soundFind meand I will be on my way...

I have the best memories as a kid eating ice cream. It was a family tradition that I had with my father. It was nice.

Yes, I believe blue material is funny, but if that's all you've got, you're dead in the water. It's not good.

I've been kind of submerged in my own little geographic location for a really long time in Venice Beach

Wrote my first "novel" when I was six. Studied a bit in college, but then pursued history... But when I started writing professionally, it was mostly learn as you go.

If indeed, as Hilbert asserted, mathematics is a meaningless game played with meaningless marks on paper, the only mathematical experience to which we can refer is the making of marks on paper.

I have no models in Japanese literature. I created my own style, my own way.

No words suffice the secret soul to show, For truth denies all eloquence to woe.

If God had to give a woman wrinkles, He might at least have put them on the soles of her feet.

Nothing is so good it lasts eternally. Perfect situations must go wrong. But this has never yet prevented me wanting far too much for far too long.